"When fascism comes to America, it will be wrapped in the flag and carrying the cross."
-- Sinclair Lewis

Friday, August 28, 2015

It Wasn't Enough For The GOP Clown Car To Alienate Latinos. Now They Want To Target Asian-Americans

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The last thing the Republican Party Establishment wanted was a raucous racist primary that highlights the disdain with which Republican candidates view minorities. But the party's angry, confused base had their own ideas-- and plenty of power-mad candidates to pander to them, one of whom is a celebrity TV reality star who knows how to command an audience and daily headlines.

It doesn't matter what Reince Priebus wants, or what the GOP's 2012 autopsy mandated, or even-- perhaps (we'll see)-- what the billionaire insurgent Koch family wants. After two Bushes and McCain and Romney, the base will not be denied; they want someone as crazy and bigoted and filled with hatred as they are-- or at least someone willing to make a spectacle out of themselves faking it-- and they have not just Trump, but a whole clown car filled with exactly what they want.

Tuesday Trump tweeted that "Asians are very offended that JEB said that anchor babies applies to them as a way to be more politically correct to hispanics. A mess!" Then he promptly pantomimed long-outmoded but still ugly Asian stereotypical speech patterns, proving, I suppose, to the base that no matter how racist Jeb goes, he'll never be able to catch up with the puerile Trump.

Republican Establishment propagandist George Will was on the warpath against Trump again Thursday, bemoaning how he's ruining the party that Will remembers the GOP once being. He seems to have as much disdain for the unwashed Republican masses as they have for immigrants and minorities. "Every sulfurous belch from the molten interior of the volcanic Trump phenomenon," he wrote, "injures the chances of a Republican presidency. After Donald Trump finishes plastering a snarling face on conservatism, any Republican nominee will face a dauntingly steep climb to reach even the paltry numbers that doomed Mitt Romney."

The white percentage of the electorate has been shrinking for decades and will be about 2 points smaller in 2016 than in 2012. In 2008, Barack Obama became the first president elected while losing the white vote by double digits. In 2012, Hispanics, the nation’s largest minority, were for the first time a double-digit (10 percent) portion of the electorate. White voters were nearly 90 percent of Romney’s vote. In 1988, George H.W. Bush won 59 percent of the white vote, which translated into 426 electoral votes. Twenty-four years later, Romney won 59 percent of the white vote and just 206 electoral votes. He lost the nonwhite vote by 63 points, receiving just 17 percent of it. If the Republicans’ 2016 nominee does not do better than Romney did among nonwhite voters, he will need 65 percent of the white vote, which was last achieved by Ronald Reagan when carrying 49 states in 1984. Romney did even slightly worse among Asian Americans-- the fastest-growing minority-- than among Hispanics. Evidently, minorities generally detected Republican ambivalence, even animus, about them. This was before Trump began receiving rapturous receptions because he obliterates inhibitions about venting hostility....In 2011, when Trump was a voluble “birther”-- you remember: Obama supposedly was not born in the United States, hence he is an illegitimate president-- an interviewer asked if he had people “searching in Hawaii” for facts. “Absolutely,” Trump said. “They can’t believe what they’re finding.” Trump reticence is rare, but he has never shared those findings. He now says, in effect: Oh, never mind. If in November 2016, the fragments of an ever smaller and more homogenous GOP might be picked up with tweezers, Trump, having taken his act elsewhere, will look back over his shoulder at the wreckage he wrought and say: Oh, never mind.

Trump’s sheer disrespect and prejudice coincides with the glaring racist ideologies that the GOP has exhibited throughout their campaigns. Jeb Bush’s derogatory comments and Donald Trump’s bigoted actions will serve as another reminder that the Republican Party does not represent the interest of communities of color and our country.

AFL-CIO President Richard Trumka backed them up with this video he put out Thursday morning.And referencing Jeb's bungled outreach to minorities, L.A.-area Congressman Ted Lieu, a lieutenant colonel in the Air Force Reserve who was elected president of the congressional freshman class, was equally mortified. This is the note he sent to his constituents Wednesday:

In the same breath that Jeb Bush calls for Americans to 'chill out' on political correctness, he accuses Asian immigrants of engaging in an 'organized effort' to have 'anchor babies.'Anyone who has served in elected office knows they have a duty to lead by example. Jeb Bush’s comments about Asian immigrants are a dangerous mischaracterization of an entire minority, plain and simple. It clearly doesn’t reflect my story. My parents immigrated to the United States to achieve the American dream. My parents went from being poor to owning a thriving small business. Their journey of hard work, sacrifice, success and contribution is as central to the American story as any other.Unfortunately, Jeb’s insulting remarks about immigrants are matched by equally-insulting policy ideas. He has no viable plan for comprehensive immigration reform. He wants to repeal our national health care law that's protecting millions of Americans and his big idea to grow the economy is to offer corporations more tax cuts.It is sad to think this all comes from the moderate Republican presidential candidate. Jeb Bush is trapped by an influential Tea Party that continues to advocate for policies that help the few at the expense of the many. My fellow Democrats and I are fighting for something different-- an America that cherishes and works for everyone.

Bao Nguyen's Vietnamese mother was pregnant with him when she escaped to Thailand. He was born in a refugee camp, and they came to America when he was still an infant. Now he is the mayor of Garden Grove in Orange County and is the progressive candidate running for the congressional seat Loretta Sanchez is giving up. Like L.A.-area Asian-American congressmembers Ted Lieu and Judy Chu, he was shocked to feel the Republican candidates attacking immigrant communities, Hispanics as well as Asians. "As an American immigrant," he told us today, "it disgusts me when I hear how Donald Trump, Jeb Bush, and the other Republican Presidential candidates have been talking about immigrants."

It’s despicable, and disgraceful. Immigrants are the backbone of this country. They built this country and continue to add to it in so many ways. I was born in a refugee camp, and came to this country when I was three months old. We didn’t have much-- let’s be honest, we were just poor. But we found a welcoming and supportive community of all nationalities and backgrounds, and with help and hard work, I was able to build a life here in California. But my story is no different from that of millions of immigrants who came to America in search of a better life-- who knew they needed to work hard and play by the rules in order to get a fair shot at the American Dream. We need to celebrate the accomplishments of our immigrant neighbors, and we need to bring everyone out of the shadows, so they can be full participants in the American Dream.